Las comunidades criptógamas como potenciales indicadores de recuperación post-fuego en el pedemonte

Among the disturbances affecting terrestrial ecosystems, fire is one of most important in Monte ecoregion Argentina. In foothills, recurrent fires generate changes composition vegetation and physiognomy landscape, without knowledge effects on cryptogams. Cryptogams include biological soil crusts (BSC), corticolous saxicolous lichens, mosses. These communities are crucial degraded ecosystems arid zones by fixing nitrogen stabilizing soil. Furthermore, some organisms BSC develop quite slowly sensitive to disturbances, which makes them potentially useful as indicators disturbance or recovery. this work, we evaluate cover frequency functional types cryptogams, well environmental factors that favor their development sites with different histories, order identify potential post-fire We found lichen frequency, cyanobacterial-dominated varied a function recovery time. Their were also affected vascular plants, bare soil, rocks mounds generated animals. variations abundance can be used success passive ecological restoration strategies. Corticolous lichens may they only present +40 years since latest showed greater response than plants. On other hand, CBS dominated cyanobacteria —being more abundant recent fires— would good processes. The wide distribution mosses, recently disturbed places, highlight these two groups actively quickly restore fires.